Why is my performance chart incorrect?

SigFig Team
- September 10, 2015 14:54

If your performance relative to the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average looks incorrect, there may be a number of factors at play:

1. You sold or purchased a stock recently. Sometimes there is a delay between the time you make a trade and the time the brokerage conveys the entire transaction to us, so SigFig Portfolio assumes that these increases / decreases in account value are jumps / dips in performance. Check back in one or two days and it should be fixed.

2. You may have some over the counter securities for which there is no publicly available data. After your initial purchase of shares, SigFig Portfolio does not pick up the daily change in value. As a result, once you sell those shares, the return to your portfolio will be recognized all at once, leading to a jump in your performance.

3. You have significant amounts of options in your portfolio. Unfortunately, we currently do not support historical options pricing data. Therefore, like over the counter securities without publicly available data, we are unable to track the daily change in value. As a result, when you sell or exercise the option (or it expires), the entire gain or loss will be realized all at once, leading to a jump on the performance chart. Note that over the long run your true performance will be accurate; in the short term however, there may be some differences.

4. You may be holding substantial amounts of debt. Like options, we are unable to follow the daily price changes for debt. As a result, when you sell a bond or it reaches maturity, any gain or loss will be realized all at once.

Lastly, there is also the possibility that we are mis-classifying certain transactions, leading to irregular discontinuities in the performance. If you have a case that you think we've missed, email us at support@sigfig.com with the subject line "Incorrect Performance Chart" and let us know a few types of recent transactions you think may have caused this.